5 Things You Didn’t Know About Game of Thrones

It’s become a kind of Internet sport to analyze, dismantle, and debate every element of Game of Thrones. Some plot points, like Jon Snow’s long-speculated return, may go unanswered; others have a more satisfying conclusion. In the lead-up to season six, which airs tomorrow, here, five things you may not have known about Game of Thrones.

1. Not all Snows are created equal: Iwan Rheon, who plays the demonic Ramsay Snow, was almost cast as Jon Snow, aka the prettiest Crow who ever lived. The story goes that Rheon did not know his character’s identity when he was first cast because Ramsay Snow has such a significant role in the Song of Ice and Fire series. “I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone about it from the beginning of filming to the broadcast of the end of season three. I was supposed to say to everyone, ‘Oh, my character is Boy,’ which was really embarrassing,” Rheon has said. “I auditioned for the pilot of Game of Thrones, and was down to the last two for Jon Snow. But Ramsay is the complete polar opposite. In my mind, I secretly thought it was Ramsay.”

2. Did Jack Gleeson’s portrayal of the maniacal King Joffrey make you think of another power-hungry ruler? You’re on to something! As it turns out, Gleeson was heavily influenced by Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Commodus in Gladiator. “Certainly for my characterization of Joffrey, that had a big impact, the smirk,” Gleeson said in 2014. His other villainous influence is a little more surprising: the monster Hexxus from FernGully. Gleeson said that the character was one of his biggest childhood fears. As the Internet has noted, Joffrey and the sadistic Roman emperor Caligula also share many characteristics, including, perhaps most alarmingly, an uncanny resemblance.

3. While filming the memorable (and nauseating) scene of Daenerys Targaryen consuming a raw stallion heart, actress Emilia Clarke was dosed in so much fake blood that she actually got stuck in the loo. “So I was kind of covered head to toe in the fake blood,” Clarke told Jimmy Kimmel. “And it kind of just stays sticky for quite a long time,” she went on. “There’s a moment when we were filming it that I disappeared and I was stuck to the toilet.” As for the “stallion heart,” Clarke revealed that it was “kind of like a big gummy bear.”

4. Speaking of the Mother of Dragons, you’ve probably been pronouncing her name all wrong. According to David J. Peterson, the language creator responsible for all the Dothraki and Valyrian dialogue on the show, the pronunciation is “KHAH-lay-see” not “ka-LEE-see.” GOT devotees are likely to cite her sworn servant Ser Jorah’s pronunciation as a reference, but Peterson said that’s how this whole mess started. “Ugh. God. That’s not how it’s supposed to sound,” Peterson once said. “The vowel change bugs me.” However, Peterson explained that the decision to keep the pronunciation as is came down to the show’s higher-ups: “The producers decided they liked the other way better. They probably thought most people were pronouncing it that way anyway, which is true.”

5. George R. R. Martin, the creator of A Song of Ice and Fire, has said many times that J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy series had a tremendous impact on him. “I revere Lord of the Rings, I reread it every few years, it had an enormous effect on me as a kid,” Martin once said. “In some sense, when I started this saga I was replying to Tolkien, but even more to his modern imitators.” There is even a pretty big Lord of the Rings Easter egg in Game of Thrones: Gandalf’s sword from LOTR appears to be welded into the Iron Throne. Eagle-eye GOT fans also spotted another illustrious saber in the throne: Robin Hood’s sword from Prince of Thieves.